A town like Barnstable shouldn’t feel helpless when it comes to protecting the quality of its water.

Sure, it’s a little unnerving to have the Conservation Law Foundation looking over your shoulder as you suss out options to preserve drinking water supplies and cleanse nitrogen-impacted embayments, but what the town has to offer – in land, facilities, and brainpower – should be enough for the task ahead.

For a year or so, the grandly renamed Comprehensive Water and Nutrient Management Plan Citizens Advisory Committee has been chipping away at the situation, building its fund of knowledge not only about the problems facing Barnstable but also the options for resolving them. Far from a cabal of Big Sewer fans, the members have listened thoughtfully to ideas that run the gamut from using organic fertilizer all the way to closing some drinking water wells and using the land for effluent discharge/recharge. And, yes, they’ve even thought about pumping treated wastewater through an outfall pipe into Nantucket Sound.

All this has been in service of bringing a range of scientifically feasible and cost-effective solutions forward to the town council, which will hold a workshop on the options in January or February. The presentation will highlight the town’s advantages, including a functioning large-scale treatment plant. In effect, a part of what Barnstable needs is already off the drawing board and in operation.

At the CAC’s Dec. 12 meeting, members and consultant Nate Weeks of GHD talked about the upcoming presentation to the council. The options offer varying combinations of, among others, continuing to use state Title 5 septic systems in low-nitrogen areas and innovative/alternative systems elsewhere, expansion of the Hyannis Water Pollution Control Facility, and development of two satellite treatment systems in the western part of town.

Even climate change, and the possibility that heavy rains could change flushing rates, is being considered. “We will need to adjust the management strategies to take into account the unusual storm events,” Weeks said.

Member Milton Berglund cautioned that the “town councilors will have their political antennae out” regarding the cost of the work. While the CAC “should stay away from the turf of the comprehensive financial advisory committee,” which is looking into financing options, Berglund said, the CAC should give the council some sense of the cost of the various options.

Who pays, and how, “is out of our charge,” chairman Phil Boudreau agreed. “Our job is to look at the most cost-efficient way to do it, and the most scientific.”

The CAC has been on a voyage of discovery over these last months, and what it has found is a town with the muscles to exert control over its own wastewater destiny. Ahead lies the need to select the right options and send the right message to those muscles to do the job.

We hope council members will remember that muscles work best in tandem, and not so well when one side of the body is overdeveloped at the expense of the other.

EFM

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